This blog will present news items about the motion picture business, with emphasis on lower budget, independent film in most cases. Some reviews or commentaries on specific films, with emphasis on significance (artistic or political) or comparison, are presented. Note: No one pays me for these reviews; they are not "endorsements"!

About Me

Since the 1990s I have been very involved with fighting the military "don't ask don't tell" policy for gays in the military, and with First Amendment issues. Best contact is 571-334-6107 (legitimate calls; messages can be left; if not picked up retry; I don't answer when driving) Three other url's: doaskdotell.com, billboushka.com johnwboushka.com Links to my URLs are provided for legitimate content and user navigation purposes only.
My legal name is "John William Boushka" or "John W. Boushka"; my parents gave me the nickname of "Bill" based on my middle name, and this is how I am generally greeted. This is also the name for my book authorship. On the Web, you can find me as both "Bill Boushka" and "John W. Boushka"; this has been the case since the late 1990s. Sometimes I can be located as "John Boushka" without the "W." That's the identity my parents dealt me in 1943!

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

“The Condemned” (“Los condenados”) is a new film by Roberto
Buso-Garcia from Puerto Rico, which seems like a somewhat minimalist
combination of “The Shining” (April 14) and “Shutter Island”.

Ana (Christina Rodlo) travels to the town of Rosales to
restore her dying father’s family mansion itno a public museum to honor his
anti-cancer work. Soon, she has to deal
with hostile, impoverished townspeople (the mansion is an oasis in a decaying
town). Then the house, where the father
lies upstairs, starts acting haunted.

It isn’t too long before the awful truth about what the
father really did to patients starts to leak out. If this happened to me, I wouldn’t want to
live. Remember, though, forty years ago,
when radiation treatment was becoming more common, it had many more side
effects, including cosmetic (such as permanent hair loss) than it does today,
where it can be internally targeted. (A particularly graphic picture of the aftermath of radiation for Hodgkin's Disease on a male chest from a 1979 medical textbook comes to mind.)

The film has a particularly interesting visual effect with a
ceiling to floor chandelier, which fairly shakes when the ghosts roam.

The DVD will be available from Strand on May 7, 2013. I did the review from a private Vimeo
screener.

The film is in Spanish. I don't recall an important indie film from Puerto Rico before.

Monday, April 29, 2013

“My name is Mud.” So
says a river fugitive to two teenage boys by Matthew McConaughey’s grungy and
tattooed character two pre-teen boys in Jeff Nichols’s new hit drama “Mud”.

The boys (Ellis and Neckbone, played by Tye Sheridan and
Jacob Lofland) look, more like 12 than the 14 that they say they are, but Ellis
particularly has tremendous energy and charisma. They’re good at doing things
with their lands, like fixing old boats that run. They “sail” to a wild island in the
Mississippi River bordering Arkansas and find a boat strung up in a tree. Soon they encounter “Mud”, who is able to manipulate
them into helping him escape and keeping his secret.

Mud is on the run, from a murder in Texas, which might have
sounded justifiable. The boys,
especially Ellis, don’t have the judgment to understand the bigger
picture; instead the most important
virtue is to carry out a military-style loyalty.

The movie gradually explores the boys’ families (divorce, of
course), and the social and work environment of river “white trash”.

This is a long film (130 minutes) and Nichols manages to
spin a captivating tale among people whom one might not sympathize with. Reese Withersppon and Sam Shepard also star.

I saw the film before a large Sunday afternoon audience at
the Angelika Mosaic in Fairfax, VA. The audience seemed to enjoy it (judging from informal reactions). Nobody thought of the characters as "losers". That seems to be a valuable skill in screenwriting -- to gain the interest of the audience in "real people" with understandable "fatal flaws".

This is another film released by the business consortium of Lionsgate, Roadside
Attractions, and produced with Everest Entertainment. Lionsgate now has a new bombastic trademark
ritual, with the heavens and stars but no machine gears (to shake off the “Saw”
image). The new music isn’t on YouTube
yet.

This film reminds me of a classic 60s thriller, “The Chase”,
which I saw in Kansas while in graduate school. That film (from Columbia and
Arthur Penn) offered Marlon Brando and Jane Fonda, and Robert Redford as “Bubba
Reeves” who is escaped from prison while his wife has an affair with the
sheriff’s friend. The whole town
anticipates his “return”.

For today's short film, look at my GLBT blog (April 28), "The Story of Tracks Nightclub".

Sunday, April 28, 2013

There is an older independent film that may sound relevant
to the Boston Marathon incident, as to what motivates this sort of action among
some young men. That 1985 film is “The Boys Next Door”, by Penelope Spheeris,
from New World Pictures and Anchor Bay.

Right after high school graduation, Roy (Maxwell Caulfield)
and Bo (Charlie Sheen, 19 when he made this film) face a lifetime of blue
collar factory work in their hometown (apparently Phoenix). Resentful perhaps that rich people have more
opportunity for college and for power, they take off on a wilding trip to Los
Angeles, actually kidnapping a little dog at first. Roy quickly turns violent at a gas station
robbery. Bo is unable to stop himself
from following along his more “charismatic” friend.

The rampage becomes more violent quickly. The two go into a
bar in West Hollywood. When they find out that it is a gay bar, they invite
themselves home, and Roy beats up and shoots the gay man. Then they turn their
attention to heterosexuals in lovers lanes.
Finally they get cornered by cops in a shopping mall. Even though he will probably face the death
penalty in California anyway, Bo turns on Roy and shoots him as the police
close in.

The opening of the film makes a statement to the effect that
rampage killers are usually young charismatic white men. Fortunately, I’ve
never encountered anything like this with anyone I have known in my whole life.

There really is no motive here, no pretense of a religious or political ideology at all.

Saturday, April 27, 2013

“Disconnect”, the new Altman-style episodic drama from Henry
Alex Rubin, maybe well be a cyberspace answer to “Crash” (Haggis) a few years
ago. As a whole, the characters are
quite likeable enough to make this the breakout film it might have been.

The crux of the story has a private investigator Mike (Frank
Grillo) helping a distraught couple Derek
and Cindy (Alexander Skarsgard and Paula Patton), after their identities are
stolen. It seems that Derek doesn’t have
enough cash to pay his bills and faces repossessions and evictions, while his
cards are frozen. It’s unclear how naïve
they are about the danger on the Net. Mike has a fiery attorney (Jason Bateman) for
a son, who intern has a tween boy engaged in online cyberhullying that results
in a suicide attempt. In another part of town (apparently on Long
Island), Nina (Andrea Riseborough) gets unwisely involved with a teen porn star
Jyle (Max Thieriot), who swears he’s 18.
But he he isn’t, she could risk jail.

I’ve seen Thieriot look "virile" in other movies (“The House
at the End of the Street”, Oct. 4, 2013 here). It was shocking to see his body
(even arms and legs) shaved (rather plucked like a chicken’s) and upper chest
tattooed ("disfiguringly") in order to look like a larval underage punk. Only a pervert could find him
attractive. What actors go through for
parts! Please, don’t imagine him naked.

The movie gradually gathers momentum, as it moves in
lightning shots between various characters, toward a showdown that seems
contrived. You expect a tragedy at the
end. I won’t tell you if you see one.

The film (from the Toronto Film Festival) is distributed by
Liddell Entertainment., link here.

I saw this before a fair crowd at the Angelika Moasic in
Merrifield, VA. Great café food (like
the deviled eggs).

Friday, April 26, 2013

Sometimes, very serious issues become the subject of
slapstick or situation comedy, and that is the case with the 2010 film “The Spy
Next Door”, by Brian Levant, from Lionsgate, Relativity Media, and “I am Rogue”.

The film amuses the audience by starting with a
recapitulation (as if part of a series) of action scenes from pervious Jackie Chan movies.

This time, Bob Ho (Chan) is getting ready to “retire” ,
despite intelligence around that the Russians or Chinese or whoever else want
to change all of America’s and Western Europe’s oil reserves into a useless yellow
power.

At the same time, Gillian (Amber Valletta), apparently a
single soccer mom, needs a babysitter
after her father is injured, and Bob gets called upon to prove that he has a
way with kids. The movie may recall the
Minnesota indie flick “I Hate Babysitting” (2000), but some of the terror
contraband winds up on one of the kids’ computers (and his iPod). It all sounds pretty contrived.

There is a blond Russian spy Larry (Lucas Till), who looks
like a 21-year-old icon from a gay disco floor.
He says he is majoring in English literature. (My own father used to ask, “Why would a man
ever want to teach English? Plenty of male English teachers are football
coaches, too.) The real life Till has an
interesting resume on Imdb, already producing sci-fi movies at the age of
22. In this movie, he seems out of
place.

“All’s well that ends well.” (That's English literature, just as in "Blood of Dracula".) Ho (if that’s his real name)
winds up marrying Gillian. Libertarians
like to see miscegenation.

The supposed official site seems to have been overlaid by :Yellow Pages". There is a Facebook page here.

Thursday, April 25, 2013

“To the Wonder” may seem like a post-script to director
Terrence Malick’s theological “The Tree of Life”, and that earlier compendium
is even quoted in the newer film. It also has a story culturally and
structurally similar to yesterday’s film (“Upstream Color”). Much of it is filmed around Bartlesville, OK,
maybe 300 miles from Dallas in yesterday’s film. You had a feeling that Ben Affleck (Neil) and
Shane Carruth could easily trade places; they have similar charisma.

The music score, compiled by New Zealand composer Hanan
Townshend, brings together a lot of less common but effective classical music,
including a Dvorak Slavonic Dance and a Gorecki symphony, and the prelude to Wagner’s
“Parsifal”. The music credits rolled so
fast that I couldn’t read them. Was that
slow, modulating theme often played by John Adams? There is discussion of the score (website url) here.

The story is innocent enough. In the opening, Neil and
Marina (Olga Kurylenko) fall in love in Paris, and one a particularly touching
visit to Mont St. Michel (the film shows the liquidity of the tide sands). Neil brings her back to Oklahoma, where he
works as an environmental inspector.
Mairna, from the Ukarine and divorced, raises a daughter Tatiana whom
she brings with her. Olga befriends
another exile, a Catholic priest (Javier Bardem). When Marina’s visa expires, she has to go
back to France with her daughter, while Neil is “distracted” by another girl
friend, Jane (Rachel McAdams).

Visually, the film was stunning, particularly on a large,
almost Imax-sized screen at Angelika Mosaic in Merrifield (Fairfax) Va. There are many scenes in a high-end suburban
development of mega-homes, similar to those in Dallas (they don’t have
basements). There is a ranch scene with
a stunning vista of the distant Ozarks.
There are also scenes of poverty, among the parishoners of the
priest.

I can recall a road trip with friends (from Dallas) in 1981,
first to Tulsa, then to the Ozarks, where we visited a family that lived in a
run down rural mobile home park. The
level of the poverty was just about the same in this movie.

The official site (Magnolia Pictures) is here. (Yesterday’s film would make a good companion
release.)

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

The new psychedelic trip, “Upstream Color”, by Shane
Carruth, comes across as a kind of heterosexual “Judas Kiss” (June 4, 2011).
Both films have a “Shane” who can be as overpowering and demanding as the
original from the famous western.

I do recall Carruth’s earlier “Primer”, produced for $7000,
where nice young business executives in Dallas played with a time machine.

Again, the setting is Dallas – with settings ranging from
the DART station on Mockingbird (I think, near the Angelika center) to pig
farms to Lake Lewisville north of the city on I-35. It’s good to see real
locations when you lived there for nine years in the 1980s (I was last there in
November 2011).

The film falls roughly into three parts. In the opening,
Kris (Amy Seimetz) deals with her demons, which include larval bugs crawling
under her skin. Is this a drug trip, or
psychosis? Well, we get to see the
larva, as a neighboring teen (Myles McGee) cultivates them. She has a couple of man-friends, one of whom
seems to have a pig farm. Well, pardon
me, this man (Frank Mosley) is supposed to be her husband, and seems rather
inert and nondescript.

Enter the hero, Jeff – that is, Shane himself. The middle part of the movie details their
intimate relationship, and also gives up “Jeff’s” manipulative background. Now Shane, 40 according to imdb – looks much
younger, like about 28 or so. As with
Gabriel Mann (Nolan) on ABC’s “Revenge”, it helps to be very lean. In this case, Shane is both taut and hairy,
the perfect male. He seems
free-wheeling, and says he does everything in cash, because he got caught in
some kind of securities fraud. I
wondered, why would Shane present “himself” this way (as a likable swindler).. People wondered that about one of my own
scripts (“The Sub”) where a character based on me falls for temptation.

The plot, loose as it is, goes in a logical direction. There’s a love triangle of sorts, and Kris
needs to get the wrong man out of the way.

The film (2..35:1) has a brooding moog music score by
Carruth himself. He really shows talent
for composing – maybe his music could get performed in concert by other friends
I have covered on my “Drama and Music” blog.
It seems like a number of actors and directors started out in the art
world with piano lessons.

Shane says that his work is a “topiary” (metaphor), where
one character doesn’t need to know what the others are doing. The tone of the film definitely recalls David
Lynch. It also (in the beginning)
reminds me of the classic horror short “Bugcrush” (Jan. 28, 2008).

I saw this at the West End Cinema, early evening show,
before a small crowd.

The film is self-distributed by “Erbp”, Carruth’s own
company. It strikes me as a logical entry
for the catalogue of fellow Texan Mark Cuban’s “Magnolia Pictures” and HDNet,
however.

The film played at Sundance.
Did it play at festivals in Texas (like SXSW)? Had it not already been released, it probably
would have been in FilmfestDC.

Picture: from my visit, 2011, DART on Mockingbird Lane in Dallas (Northpark used to be there; Angelika is there now.)

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

I’m not such a big fan of science fiction set in a
post-apocalyptic world where few people are left around, or where there are
practically no remnants left of the enticing trappings of the familiar modern
world. I’m much more interested in seeing
“how it happened” and if anything can stop it.
That’s why the NBC series “The Event” worked a lot better for me than
does “Revolution”.

But the new sci-fi action flick from Joseph Kosinski, “Oblivion”,
may not need much population for its first half, with an ageless Tom Cruise
Mapother IV (age 50) as the hero. He can go shirtless and look like a teenager
right out of “Risky Business”.

The early part of the film shows an Earth destroyed by
cataclysms, which had resulted when an alien race called the “Scav’s” broke up
the Moon, leading to tremendous earthquakes and tsunamis on Earth. The CGI image of the Moon in pieces is pretty
effective. But the geography of the
remaining Earth is in tatters. It may
all be a desert, but the Empire State Building crest is nowhere near
Yosemite.

Cruise plays Jack Harper (maybe inspired by the Washington
Nationals’ Bryce Harper), whose post-sports career consists of repairing
airborne drones. He lives in a
Dubai-Burj-sized tower over the clouds with a female partner Vaca (Andrea
Riseborough), who seems to enjoy her gigantic iPad-style control panels.

Harper’s narration says that the remaining Earth residents
(after “winning” the war with nukes) moved to Titan (the most interesting moon
of Saturn, with its methane rain and lakes). But when he eventually comes into
contact with the spaceship supposedly populated by Scavs, he finds out that
they are really reprocessed humans (led by the omniscient Morgan Freeman). Did any survivors really go to Titan? How would they survive there?

The story is complicated (there is already a long synopsis on
imdb), and it seems to wander among areas of reality in a manner that mind
recall the film “Inception”; but
Kosinski doesn’t succeed in making his worldview as compelling as does
Christopher Nolan. Eventually, Harper
finds out he has a doppleganger, and we enter some of the ideas of “Invasion of
the Body Snatchers” (itself filmed at least four times). Harper has been cloned a multiplicity of
times. (Really, wouldn’t most men like
to live in a clone of Bryce Harper’s body rather than their own? And which body
and soul are real? Or can a sould move
among bodies?)

The visuals of the Scav space ship (up in orbit somewhere) internals
are interesting, and remind one of a sequence in the first “Star Trek” movie
back in 1979.

There is a long lost wife Julia (Olga Kurylenko) and family
that comes into the story, and there is redemption at the end. Somewhere around a cabin in a Sierra-Nevada-like
paradise (maybe near Tahoe), a new
family will form and civilization will bloom again. Hooray for family values.

I think a sci-fi movie where mankind is spread among several
planets (maybe Mars, Europa, and Titan, and maybe even the high clouds of Venus
in a balloon) and can communicate, could be interesting. Within the Solar System, you could have
Facebook available, with at most a three hour delay in posting.

During the closing credits, Kosinski does show up some
graphics (worked over from live shots taken in Iceland) of what Titan really
might look like. And that closing song
(sung by Susamme Sundfor, composed by Anthony Gonzalez and “feat M83”) is great
– in a league with “Skyfall”. The theme
has great Mahlerian leaps and would be hard to sing.

I saw this Monday afternoon at Regal in Arlington, and you
don’t know whether you get a large auditorium.
I saw it in a small one. But with
digital high definition, it doesn’t matter much. But Regal always says, “Go big or go home.”

I could expand on the concept of a movie that shows "how it happens" when it doesn't end well for humanity. I suppose that this could sound nihilistic (as in the film "Melancholia"). It seems more acceptable to audiences to present a dystopian world, post-apocalypse, rather than show what mojo it takes to make it through a global catastrophe, where only "the angels" make it.

Monday, April 22, 2013

I drove out to the far exurbs (Ashburn, VA, in Loudoun
County, at a new Regal) to see “Home Run” because it is a baseball movie. And
the film, from director David Boyd, is, not surprisingly, a Christian film,
that the theater owners prefer to exhibit in more rural and “conservative” and
often religious communities.

If you’re going to make a faith-based and socially
conservative movie, fine. Please build
characters that you can like. Have a real plot and suspense. “Abel’s Field”, a few weeks ago, did
that.

But this film turned preachy toward the end as a lot of
people, whom some people would see as “losers”, stood up and announced their
submission to “Him” in what was supposed to be a faith-based twelve-step
program. No problem with that – I don’t
think that’s what happens. The film isn't just "religious" or faith-based; as Bill Maher says, it's "Religulous".

The film opens as a young Cory is bullied by his father on
the family farm by the “six strikes” rule.
He does learn to be a good left-handed hitter. Cut to the modern day, and Cory hits what
should be an inside-the-park home run but misses third base because he is drunk
and is called out on appeal. That one
scene in the film was technically effective.

He throws a tantrum, injures a batboy, and is suspended on
condition of completing a twelve-step program.
But he keeps drinking during the program, and even causes injury in an
auto DWI wreck.

Cory is played by Scott Elrod, who looks appealing enough,
until the high-definition digital images in Regal’s outstanding new projection
system show that he shaves his forearms.
Justin Timberlake seems to have done that.

The film does convey the intimacy and dynamics of young
family life at times, and suggests the idea that it can draw others in.

The setting of the film, Oklahoma, in and around Tulsa,
looks appealing enough.

But the filmmakers had to “greek” all the MLB team
names. Apparently MLB wouldn’t license
their trademark use in this film for any reasonable price. Was that because of the “religious”
purpose?

Sunday, April 21, 2013

FilmfestDC offered the documentary “Informant”, by Jamie
Meltzer, at the NYU Auditorium near Franklin Square yesterday. If there is such
a thing as a documentary thriller, this 85-minute-film fits the bill. It felt like the perfect complement to “Paris
under Watch” Friday night.

The film tells the story of activist Brandon Darby, now
about 38, who switched political allegiances because of his desire to act in a
way that “helps people” immediately.
Brandon was raised near an oil refinery near Houston, but moved to
Austin as a young man. He has a
daughter, although the film does not deal with his romantic life at all.

In 2005, he drove to New Orleans after Katrina to help
survivors, and actually swam through toxic water (against police orders) in the Ninth Ward to
rescue a stranded friend. His bravery and willingness to take personal risks to help others is quite striking. He helped
organize “Common Ground” at the grassroots.
Later, he traveled to Venezuela and Colombia and his feelings about
left-wing activism changed. He began to
see the Left as highly indignant, and possibly leading the country simply into
destructive anarchy. Ironically, though,
he felt that a little anarchy was a good thing.
Tea party and libertarian values started to appeal to him.

Through a twist in his personality that is hard to explain,
he, after being approached, decided to help tie FBI working undercover to “entrap”
protestors planning to disrupt the Republican Convention in St. Paul, MN (at
the Xcel Center, which I remember).

He “worked” with a couple of idealistic young men who wanted
to make Molotov cocktails and throw them at parked police and “rich people’s”
cars. The activists rationalized their
activity by saying they would damage property only, not hurt people. But when Brandon probed them about the
possibility someone could get hurt, they were willing to take that risk. (I pointed this out in the QA afterwards,
that political and religious radicals – particularly the extreme Left -- often think that regular people have it coming
to them – even one of the Boston “people” is reported to have said that – and some
audience members sounded offended).

The young activists (themselves from Austin) would be
arrested, prosecuted and do jail time for federal offenses WMD possession. (“Property damage” alone can kill people, by
the way – look at the RF or EMP “threat” discussed elsewhere, as on April 13 on
the Books blog). Brandon had worn a wire
(which could be interesting, if you remember a particular scene from “Se7en”). The defense would claim that the young men
had been set up.

The far Left considered Brandon to be a “snitch”, and the "fibbies" even offered Brandon witness protection, For a public person like him (or even me), of
course, that’s impossible.(as in the 2006 Lifetime film “Family in Hiding”).

This film should not be confused with a similar film about
activism, “The Informant”, with Matt Damon, reviewed here Sept. 18, 2009.

For documentary, this film kept me on the edge of my
seat. The style of filming did interview
people (including Brandon Darby in his Austin home), but it bordered on
docudrama. The subject matter seems to belong to a John Grisham thriller.

The main production company is Lucky Hat. Will this film wind up on HBO or PBS
Independent Lens, or maybe be rebroadcast by CNN? I’d like to see a theatrical company pick it up first.

Pictures: New Orleans (2006), St. Paul Mississippi River (2002), mine.

Saturday, April 20, 2013

I screened the lengthy (134 minutes)“meta-documentary” “The Pervert’s
Guide to Ideology” tonight at the NYU Abramson Auditorium near Franklin Square
in Washington DC, on the last night of FilmfestDC. The film, directed by Sophie Fiennes, is written and narrated by University of Ljubljana
professor Slavoj Zizek. The film is a
sequel to “A Pervert’s Guide to Cinema”
(2006).

In general, “ideology” means the “purpose beyond the self”
that we are expected to live for, whether we express it in religious terms
(Allah, God, Jehovah) or social (“the common good”, eusociality). To me, the
term evokes Rock Warren’s “The Purpose-Driven Life”. But in the end, Zizek believes that maybe it
does need to be about you.

The professor develops his these by looking at perhaps 20
movies, starting with “They Live” (1988,
John Carpenter) in which a drifter Nada (Roddy Piper) finds a pair of
sunglasses through which, in black and white, he always sees the subliminal message
behind everything (like “marry and procreate”).
He follows to “The Sound of Music”, some of Stanley Kubrick’s films
(like ‘Clockwork Orange”, discussed in “Room 237” (April 14), Full Metal Jacket”, the Russian film “The Fall
of Berlin (1949), Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” (2008). Martin Scorcese’s “The Last Temptation of
Christ” (1988), and “Seconds” (1966, John Frankenheimer).

Of course, once we accept a “higher purpose”, there is every
risk that leadership will become corrupt and exploit it. Zizek shows how this process was
fundamentally the same with Fascism and Communism (he spends more time on
Stalin than Hitler). Nevertheless, the
individual is in a position to “carry his weight” and maintain loyalty to the
group. Somewhat infrequently in the grand scheme of things, the individual may
have to confront that his affinity group, however established by propinquity,
may have evil purposes.

Happiness and joy are themselves separated within the
personality into “objects”, particularly within Catholicism (as he demonstrates
with “Sound of Music”). The power of the
military can become overpowering in determining the personal values in the
culture (as shown in “Full Metal Jacket” – and developed in the Army Basic
chapter in my own manuscript “The Proles” as well as in Chapter 2 of my first
DADT book). Zizek discusses the
crucifixion in comparison to the Book of Job, and concludes that that
Christianity liberates the individual from a purpose defined by “God”. In the end, he supports an individualistic, libertarian outlook
and capitalism after all.

I was quite impressed with the music in the background of “Fall
of Berlin” – it is the closing bombastic passage of one of Richard Strauss’s
last works, “Freedom’s Day”.

Zizek also describes how the "Ode to Joy" theme from the finale of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony has been misused by totalitarian idealogues, ranging from Hitler to Chairman Mao, He shows Bernstein conducting it at the Christmas concert in Berlin in 1989 after the fall of the Berlin Wall (a CD than I have).

With his analysis of “The Dark Knight” (Batman), Zizek shows
that the “goodness” of those in power was fake, and suggests that a dark
character (the Joker) is necessary to show up the truth. It sounds horrible,
but somehow this sort of thinking drove James Holmes mad in Colorado, it
seems. This part of the film as probably
filmed before the July 2012 mass shooting in Colorado.

The film was shot in 2.35:1 aspect to fit all the films, and often the narrator appears alone in the same aspect (and similar scenery) as the film he has just discussed. So the screen was constantly "shape-shifting".

Friday, April 19, 2013

Tonight, I saw the virtuoso new French-Arabic thriller “Paris
Under Watch” (“Aux yeux de tous”, “Through all of our eyes”) by Cedric Jimenez, at the AMC Mazza as a
Filmfest DC presentation.

While I watched the film on a prepurchased ticket (the large
auditorium was almost sold out), a heavy thunderstorm raged outside, adding
sound effects to the opening scene with the Paris subway explosion.

During the time I was in the theater,
apparently the second suspect in the Boston Marathon attack was
apprehended. It was uncanny that this
film was aired at the same time, on April 19. Another patron mentioned the
arrest , which he had seen on the cell phone, as we left the theater.

Early in the film, the media claims that security tapes of
the event were destroyed, but soon we see a figure, from the back, male (from
the forearms with blond hairs), stocking cap, entering Linux commands into some
sort of command center, with all kinds of connections, terminals, and ham
equipment around. We see the entire
story of the attack, of how Sam (Olivier Bathelemy) was tricked into what he
thought was a fake attack, how his girl friend Marie (Valerie Sibilia) wants them to turn
themselves in – even though Sam did this to raise money for Marie’s mom. He go from filial responsibility (where
Muslim immigrants typically have to send money home) to the politics of terror.

In the end of this fast-moving film, we learn the capability
of both governments and teenagers living with their moms, with no real moral
compass yet.

This will be a real hit in the US when it finds North
American distribution.

Wikipedia attribution link for Eiffel Tower picture, near where I stayed in May 2001.

It’s important to note that many stations on the Paris Metro
have plexiglass security to protect the tracks.
No US city does. That point well
made in a 1999 Nightline special about a hypothetical attack on a US subway.

Thursday, April 18, 2013

On Thursday, April 18, 2013, FilmfestDC offered another environmental
film as part of its “Green Screen” or “Earth Month” in the Columbia Room at
Union Station, “Elemental”, by Gayatri Roshan and Emmanuel Vaughn-Lee.

The film centers somewhat on water, with three parallel
environmental stories, interleaved. In India, Rajendra Singh recruits the
masses to help clean up the Ganges, often with dirty manual labor and wading in
muck. Toward the end, the film shows us the source of the river in the
Himalaya.

In northern Alberta, Eriel Deranger leads demonstrations
against the tar sands project, which has disfigured an area the size of New
Jersey, although the land is largely flat so there isn’t an issue with
mountaintop removal. The film gets into
moral questions about using land of aboriginal or native peoples, but the oil
companies claim that they have given then people “real jobs” and real money.
Plenty of arrests and demonstrations are shown, including those in October 2011
in front of the White House, specifically against the XL Pipeline.

In California, a nearly bankrupt Australian inventor, Jay
Harman proposes a system based on a mathematical concept, based on a fractal
and vortex, to shot reflective compounds into the stratosphere and reverse
global warming. The film doesn’t explain
the concept particularly well. At the end. Harman retires into the woods in a cabin, in poverty.

The link for the film is here. The film also aired in Austin and Cleveland
film festivals.

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

“Shored Up”, presented today by FilmfestDC as a free film in
the Columbia Room of Union Station in Washington DC, is presented by its
director, Ben Kalina as a work in progress.
But at 84 minutes, it seemed like a pretty close-to-done study of the
problems of building housing, mostly luxury resorts today, on beachfront
property, particularly barrier islands,
off the coasts of New Jersey and then North Carolina.

Much of the early part of the film presents damage from
Hurricane Sandy, particularly in Union Beach, NJ, which was not wealthy enough
to lobby for money for beach sand restoration projects. Breezy Point in the Rockaways (Queens, NY) is
shown briefly, as is the flooding of the subways.

The documentary also
argues that shore islands tend to move naturally, and will do so more with
climate change.

The film presents the history of a March 1962 noreaster
which was as destructive as Sandy to some beach communities. (The same storm produced heavy snow inland,
west of Washington DC). Yet, much of the
same area was rebuilt within 20 years, with residents having short
memories. Developers seem to have no
awareness of the dangers of living in a coastal area – or they may not
care. One homeowner on the North
Carolina coast said he needed only five years in his unprotected house to break
even before losing it.

A Republican North Carolina congresswoman says that conservatives need to rethink the meaning of "conservative" when it refers to conserving resources, and bailing out wealthy property owners.

Toward the end, New York State governor Andrew Cuomo speaks,
and notes that we will have to make careful decisions about where we
rebuild.

During the Q&A, a woman from the Union of Concerned
Scientists spoke. I asked about the
volunteerism and “grab a hammer” spirit that was demonstrated by the public
after the storm, almost oblivious to the idea that it might be unwise to
rebuild. Kalina noted that you can’t
hold moderate income people (mostly on
the NY side) hostage to choices made in the past by politicians and
developers.

I report on my own trip through the area on my “Issues” blog
March 13-15. Pictures (Seaside Heights NJ, and Staten Island, my trip).

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

“The Company You Keep” shows the capabilities of a
journalist, and also the people skills needed by “establishment” reporters to
get the story and break a case open. The
film, from Voltage and Sony Pictures Classics (why not Columbia?) is directed
by Robert Redford himself, and is based on the novel by Neil Gordon.

The movie is also a retrospect of the values of the extreme
radical Left in the 1970s, and the reasons it took up violence. It traces a little of the history of the
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the mutation to the Weather
Underground. The characters talk about
the corporations and politicians on top, who thought nothing of sending draft
notices and sacrificing less fortunate young men in Vietnam as cannon
fodder. The old problem of whose life
counts the most inevitably comes up.

There was a documentary “The Weather Underground” in 2003,
by Sam Green and Bill Siegel, which would supplement this film.

As this new film (wide screen, 124 minutes) opens, 30-year
fugitive Sharon Solarz (Susan Sarandon) is surrounded by FBI agents at a gas
station near New York City. She had
planned to give herself up. She has contacted
lawyer Jim Grant (Robert Redford). An
eager reporter Ben Shepard (Shia LaBeouf) discovers that Grant is really Nick
Sloan, a co-fugitive from the same fatal Michigan bank robbery.

Shepard, who is quite appealing as a character, is motivated
by a combination of idealism and self-promotion. He goes to lengths that strain
credibility. (At one point he bribes a clerk to get Sloan's SSN.) I’m an “amateur” blogger
and I do uncover things, and in my own way I probably take some arcane risks in
doing so, but of a very different nature that the obvious ones in this movie –
because the movie does have to entertain.
But consider the risks that reporters like Bob Woodruff took, getting a
traumatic head wound in Iraq and recovering fully. Anderson Cooper “paid his years” for years as
a SE Asia reporter. Also interesting in films like this is how the names pof
real newspapers are “greeked.”

A good question, that the film does not go into, would be the ability of journalists to protect sources, and it is not absolutely clear that bloggers like me could command the same privilege. The script does demonstrate the "off the record" concept.

There are many other characters, played by A-listers. They include Sloan’s young daughter (Jackie
Evancho), Sloan’s brother (Chris Cooper), Henry (Brendan Gleeson), his daughter
(Brit Marling), other fugitives (Julie Christie and Sam Elliott), Sam’s boss (Stanley Tucci).

I did learn of the potentially violent possibilities of the
radical Left back in 1972 when I “spied” on meetings of the Peoples Party of
New Jersey. I remember one in particular
in a row house in Newark, New Jersey where even the young professional middle
class (me) was seen as a parasitic enemy.

Monday, April 15, 2013

“Tabu” is an interesting two-part film from Portugal and
Brazil from Miguel Gomes. It’s styled and structured in “New Wave” fashion,
reminiscent of “In Praise of Love” (2001) by Jean Luc-Godard, where the second
half occurred before the first half.

The film is also curious in its black-and-white format and
old aspect ration (about 4:3), making it look like an old 50s film. The music score contains a lot of jazz and
rock popular 50 years ago, and an impressionistic jazz piano theme that sounds
familiar but whose composer I couldn’t identify.

The film starts with a prologue in Mozambique, where Comes
himself narrates the suicide of an explorer devoured by a crocodile.

In Part 1 of the film (“Paradise Lost”) , in modern Lisbon, we
meet Aurora (Laura Soveral) , in her 80s, a housemaid, and a concerned
neighbor. A daughter has apparently refused
contact with Aurora. This part of the
film seems a bit aimless, until the characters meet her past lover, Gian-Luca
Ventura.

In Part 2 ("Paradise"), Ventura narrates the story of his affair with
Aurora in the 50s, on the slopes of Mount Tabu.
Aurora (Ana Moreira) is married, and Ventura has a friend Mario (Mario
Mesquita) with whom he sometimes seems intimate. The story is presented in “silent film” fashion,
while Ventura narrates. This part of the film is quite captivating. The “ending”
has a certain political irony, having to do with driving European colonialism
out of Africa, along with left-wing ideology – money is lost to gambling, and
the plantation could be at risk of expropriation. Some critics, however, say that Gomes looks at
colonialism as an “aesthetic opportunity” rather than a moral problem.

In one line in Part 1, Aurora says she is paying for the
sins of other people. I’m not sure I
agree.

The black and white photography is quite sharp, and at time
your mind wants to change the gray vegetation to dark green. The jungle scenes were apparently actually
filmed in the Brazilian highlands.

I spent one night in Lisbon in April , 2001, the first stop
on a European trip that year. I stayed
in a hotel on top of the hill, and saw a lot of condo development that was said
to be stimulated then by the Euro. I
took the subway once. The next day, I
took the night train to San Sebastian, Spain.
During the day, I took a bus trip to Fatima to see the shrine related to
the Virgin Mary appearance. I believe I
caught sight of that place in the film.

I saw this film at a late afternoon showing today at the West End Cinema in Washington DC, before a fair crowd for a weekday. The film is in its second week there.

Sunday, April 14, 2013

In recent years, studios have rewarded purchasers of BluRay
DVD’s of high profile films with “making of” documentaries that may become
feature-length documentaries of their own.

The documentary “Room 237” accomplishes something like this
as a “movie about movies” film concerning the 1980 classic,”The Shining”,
Stanley Kubrick’s vision of Stephen King’s horror novel about a writer (Jack Nicholson) to takes a job caretaking a
Colorado hotel in winter, when his gifted son sees ghosts and evil in the
patterns everywhere. I saw the original film myself in Dallas in 1980 (at Northpark, I believe.)

The documentary, kind of a recitation of comments by some
other observers and writers like Bill Blakemore and Judy Kearns, advances a few
core theories about the “meaning” of Kubrick’s film. One is to see it a
metaphor for genocide, most of all of native Americans by European settlers
(resulting in today’ s tribal reservation system with its casinos). It adds to this metaphors based on the
Holocaust, and even denial that Apollo really landed on the moon in 1969. In the industry, this film is called a “critical
theory” documentary.

The documentary contains numerous clips from many of Kubrick’s
other films, including “2001: A Space Odyssey”, “A Clockwork Orange”, and “Eyes
Wide Shut”. The documentary makes some
comparisons between many of the images and even geometric patterns in the rooms
of the hotel with the final “hotel on Jupiter” scene of 2001.

The film also explains the significance of the choice of 237
as the critical room number.

The layout of the Overlook hotel looks a little bit like a
board game, reminding me not of “Clue” but of a less well known game “Mr. Ree”
from the 1950s. The documentary talks
about the maze, which is not in the novel.

“The Place Beyond the Pines”
(not “behind”) is a spot in the Adirondack foothills where a critical
confrontation occurs between a father and son, of opposing families. That doesn’t happen until near the end of
this 140-minute crime drama that is styled in the fashion of major 70s and 80s
classics (“The Deer Hunter”, based on the Vietnam era, comes to mind). It is a film “in three parts”, and almost
like three short films stitched together, each with its won BME (“beginning,
middle, and end” in screenwrit9ing circles).

The public comes into this film having been dazzled by
previews with Ryan Gosling’s heavily tattooed (and necessarily “thmooth”)
bod. It’s not attractive. Ryan is going from being nice boy to playing
hardened professional criminals (as in “Drive”), go down their courses because they believe
they have to. As the movie starts in the 1990s, Luke Glanton is a broke
motorcycle stunt rider (I was worked a show of motorcycle stunts at the
Metrodome in 2003 in a volunteer
project) with a young boy and (illegal
immigrant) girl friend (Eva Mendes). He
meets a rural hobo (Craig von Hook) who introduces the idea of surviving and
providing for his family with bank robberies with bike getaways. After all, it’s just revolution against the
capitalist pig system, right? Nobody
gets hurt.

At the end of Part I, Luke’s luck runs out. Cornered in a residential neighborhood, he
invades a home. The family escapes, and
a policeman Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper) shoots him dead in a confrontation. (The
shooting scene seems to be done with a stunt double for Cooper.) In Part II, Avery, a high-minded law school
graduate who had decided to join the police force (Bradley Cooper still always
plays nice guys) , deals with a scandal in which police officers (led by Ray Liotta’s character) raid the homes
of associates of dead criminals to keep money for themselves. Avery, wounded in the confrontation but
recovering physically over time, sees an
opportunity to turn his own life back toward law and politics,

Part III occurs 15 years later, after Avery’s father
(instrumental in Avery’s handling of the scandal) has passes away. In the aftermath of the funeral, Avery’s own
teenage son (Emory Cohen, whose character displays too much chest hair for a
teen) happens to meet Luke’s son Jason (Dane DeHaan). Both are troubled and into underage drinking
and drugs. All of this leads to a
confrontation where kids bear the sins of their fathers.

The film, written and directed by Derek Cianfrance, who also
developed the story, which has the
aspects of a Theodore Dreiser novel (or perhaps Cormac McCarthy). It will lend itself to “novelization” for
eBook sales, I’m sure. The directorial
style reminds one of the Coen Brothers, although there is less direct humor and
irony. The music score by Mike Patton
broods with a curious triple-time rhythm, a kind of Ravel-like caricature of
the waltz (“La Valse”).

This is a big film, from Studio Canal and Sidney Kimmel,
filmed in the Albany NY area. In earlier
decades, it would have been branded as a major studio release (Universal)
rather than the “arthouse” label Focus. The link is here. The budget was $15 million. I didn’t see any film festival notes on the
site; I would have expected a film like
this to clean house at a major international festival. I’m surprised to see it released early in
the year, when it could have been in Oscar contention.

I saw this at the AMC Shirlington in the big auditorium late Saturday night. There was a small crowd. That older theater does not seem to have digital projection yet. It also plays at the AMC Courthouse in Arlington, which is much more modern now after renovation (with reclined seats and enhanced digital projection), but was too late for that show. AMC rarely shows a film at both theaters in Arlington VA. It must have high expectation from this one.

"They" don't make large-scale "realistic" films like this much anymore. I love the film style of the 1980s.

Friday, April 12, 2013

The story of Jackie Robinson’s entry into baseball, and the
Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, as told in the new film “42” by Brian Helgeland,
makes one point about bullying and social combat above all others. People act like bigots because they believe
they will treated as social inferiors by their own peers if they don’t. Once an inflection point is achieved in
social prejudice, “it gets better” pretty fast.

Rickey expected Jackie (Chadwick Boseman) to take up
overcoming bigotry -- by turning the
other cheek -- as his own special sacrifice and challenge. Most of the time he did. He preceded Rosa Parks, and so did his wife Rachel (Nicole Beharie).

It makes another libertarian point. Eliminating prejudice is good business. Branch Rickey (Harrison Ford) decided, right after World War II, that he
wanted African American players because hiring them would give him a
competitive edge over other teams. “Green”
(money) doesn’t know race.

Groupthink was dangerous at first. On their first road trip, in 1947, the
Dodgers would find that their hotel in Philadelphia (the “city of brotherly
love”) l refused to put up the team because of one black player.

The film also shows how Jackie’s aggressive baserunning could take advantage of opponent’s
(especially pitchers’) distractions.

The suspension of Leo Durocher (Christopher Meloni) for
having a mistress adds to the curious contradictions in the mores of the
times.

The shower scene has some visual anomalies. And the script makes points that anticipate
the course of some of the debate on gays in the military to occur almost fifty
years later. Remember, Truman integrated
the military in 1948 (one year after the time period of this film), as
demonstrated in the HBO film “Truman”.

The film recreates the old National League ballparks
well. I don’t know how it was done. But besides Ebbets Field in Brooklyn (with
its 297 foot right filed line and slanted wall), it shows the Polo Grounds in
Manhattan, Forbes Field in Pittsburg, Crosley Field in Cincinnati, and Sportmans
Park in St. Louis.

The film has other technical inaccuracies, though. There were no insterstate highways in
1946. And in the climactic scene where
Robinson hits a home run in Pittsburg (a long shot there), “Dem Bums” were on
the road and had to survive the bottom of the ninth.

The official site from Warner Brothers and Legendary
Pictures is here. Both companies used their musical trademarks
this time.

The film points out the "42" is the only MLB uniform number completely retired. In Cincinnati at one point, Pee Wee Reese (Lucas Black), puts his arm around Robinson and says, "Maybe we can all wear the number 42 so no one can tell us apart."

I saw the film at the Regal in Arlington VA Friday afternoon
in a small auditorium, with a fair crowd for a weekday, on the opening day.

I started following MLB in 1953 at the age of 10. By that time, black players were common. I recall Larry Doby or the Cleveland Indians and Minnie Minoso of the Chicago White Sox. I can't recall black players on the Washington Senators during that period.

Thursday, April 11, 2013

Filmfest DC for 2013 opened at the Regal Gallery Place with
a showing on two screens of “Underground: The Julian Assange Story”, by Robert
Connolly and Matchbox Films (Australia), based on the book by Suelette
Dreyfus.

The film shows a teenage Julian (Alex Williams, who is quite
charismatic in the role) taking after his mother’s (Rachel Griffiths) activism
and learning to hack conventional telephone circuits with his home PC, and
eventually spy on the US military’s plans during Desert Shield and Desert Storm
during the 1990-1991 Persian Gulf War. (Assange claims, in a climactic film at his
arrest, that he can prove that the US military knew it was deliberately killing
civilians with air strikes in Iraq.) The
film starts in 1989 in Melbourne, Australia, and is quite interesting in
showing the capabilities of technology (like the Commodore or Apple with a dialup
connection, and telnet Unix commands) at the time, just with dialup. Remember “War Games” (1983)?

Julian’s mother demonstrates against things like using
plutonium in space satellites. Julian already has a passion for journalism, for
sleuthing and discovering the deepest secrets himself.

Julian also becomes a father with his girl friend at around
18. I wondered how he was going to support his new family. But he is driven by his passion. One thing that helps him, too, is pure
physical stamina.

I share the same passion, but more for collecting and
collating all the arguments to present a complete, objective picture on the
social justice issues, and sustainability. It’s not necessary to hack illegally
(and I don’t know how to do it). But
sometimes people do pass information on even to me that probably is secret.

The closing credits explained the light sentence Assange got in 1991 from a sympathetic judge. It summarizes briefly his founding of Wikileaks in 2006.

The showing (sold out in two large auditoriums tonight) was
followed by a live phone call to Assange at his political asylum hideout in the
Ecuador Embassy in London. He spoke for
about twenty minutes.

Assange said that the Internet can mark either the down fall
or salvation of civilization. He said we have no privacy anymore. All of us are practically compelled to
display our lives on social media. He also has mellowed a bit on the importance
of government, saying government has to protect the rights of the people but
needs stability and control to do so.

There was an opening night party at Bar Louie, also in the
Verizon Center, with a spicy Mexican hors d’oeuvres table. A supplementary CD offering featurettes and
the screenplay text was provided.

The film should be compared to "We Are Legion", reviewed here June 25, 2012. Also there is "Julian Assange: A Modern Day Hero" on Sept. 19, 2012, and :WikiRebels" on Dec. 12, 2012; and The 40 minute Bradley Manning video of friendly fire in Iraq, "Collateral Murder" may be viewed from an embed in an April 7, 2010 review on my "Films on major threats to freedom" blog (check my Profile).

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

“The Silence” (“Das letzte Schweigen”), from Baran bo Odar,
presents the idea that a man can pay for the sins of someone else as well as
his own. But we he does so, he probably
has more skeletons in his own closet. It’s
the law of karma.

As the film opens, on a July day in 1986 in a forest in
Germany, a girl is riding a bicycle when a car starts to follow her. The rape
and murder by the driver Peer (Ulrich Thomson) is horrific, and his companion
Timo (Wotan Wilke Mohring) seems shocked at first, but then seems to go along.

Twenty-three years later on the same date, another girl
disappears at the same spot. The film
develops the police and media investigation, with reference to the similarities
of the past. Slowly, Peer and Timo come
back into the story. The film really
doesn’t show them as aged as much as would be expected.

But there is a twist this time. The companion has a dark side, revealed by
what is on his computer.

Curiously, Peer
has lived rather cleanly as an apartment handyman for some two decades.

The official site is here. The film is distributed in the US my
Music Box.

I saw the film at the West End Cinema in Washington DC
during an afternoon show.

Tuesday, April 09, 2013

In the early days of email, especially on AOL, sending or
even forwarding a “Chain Letter” was against Terms of Service, for “collective”
reasons. I can remember, back in 1964,
getting a real chain letter in the mail.
If I would send a quarter, I would get back $64 in quarters. I actually got back 2.

The horror film “Chain Letter” (2010) starts with a principle and a premise. After a graphic opening, which is repeated to
close the film and give it an incomplete “Pulp Fiction” structure, we see a
high school history teacher lecturing students on the idea that technology may
have cost people their privacy. In the good old days, before cell phones, your
phone messages waited for you at home.
By the mid 1970s, having an answering machine was considered a necessary
advance.

In the movie, some likable high school kids (some of whom
look a little too mature, with widow’s peaks or thinning hair) start getting
chain letters (sometimes in chat rooms).
Students who delete their instance of the chain letter get hunted down
and dealt gruesome deaths with S&M chain equipment.

There is a theory that the lone wolf (or maybe groups) is
another super Luddite of the Unabomber or Ted Kaczynski (mentioned in the film),
who wants to make a point, that those who “depend” on technology will get their
just desserts. Of course, one can extend
that point into discussions of our whole society’s vulnerability to severe or
even permanent disruption from solar storms or terrorist EMP attacks.

The word “chain letter” is also used in epidemiology, of
course.

The site for the film, directed by Deon Taylor, is here. The DVD is distributed by Image, and the
original release was from New Films International (no relation to New Line
Cinema).

For today’s short film, look up “Lloyd Neck” (15 min), by
Benedict Campbell, from 2008 Sundance. In this gentle film, college track star Taylor
(Aaron Michael Davies) begins to realize that his younger sister Alex (Carina
Goldbach) has a crush on his own techie boyfriend Jesse (Brian Dare).

Sunday, April 07, 2013

When use the term “On the Road”, I usually picture myself in
a chain hotel, with my electronics, including a smaller travel laptop, and
limited supplies otherwise. To a baseball team, it means having to survive the bottom of the ninth inning.

When I was a graduate student at the University of Kansas,
in December 1966, a few of us rode from Lawrence to San Francisco, crashing
somewhere around Redwood City, then drove north to Seattle and Vancouver,
before I flew home for Christmas. I had
never been west of Topeka, at 23. We
drove an “in transit” car from Kansas City and “took off”.

With films from American Zeotrope and Francis Ford Coppola
behind them, you never know. “On the Road” (dir. Walter Salles) looks like an eclectic period piece
(set in the late 1940s), made in the style of an 80s or early 90s' film (like "Barton Fink" or "Thelma and Louise"). Sal (Sam Riley,
playing a character patterned after the novel author Jack Keruoac) is a young
writer (everything on typewriters, and you couldn’t publish yourself), and has
the adventure of young manhood crisscrossing the country several times with his
less stable friends, especially Dean Moriarity (Garrett Hedund), who is
uncertain about the idea of marriage and fatherhood with teen Maylou (Kristen
Stewart).

This is a pre-McCarthy world (just barely), where men
embrace and hug one another, as long as there are women around to make
babies. Dean gradually comes to be shown
as bisexual, willing to “do me” for money in one scene. Tom
Sturridge plays Carlo Marx, a character patterned after Alan Ginsberg (review
Nov. 26, 2010), and he definitely "gets it" in one early scene; Viggo Mortensen plays old Bull Lee, based on Edgar Rice
Burroughs (March 1, 2012).

There's a bit of class consciousness in the film, since Sal's hands are soft, and he gets criticized in metaphor for his low output when working in a cotton field in California,

The site for the film (also called “The Mad Ones”) is here. http://themadones.us/ , and it is distributed
by IFC and Sundance Channel, but it was made with all kinds of resources,
including Film4 in the UK, French television, Icon, Canada, and studios in
Louisiana and Arizona. It is also
distributed by Lionsgate in the UK.

I saw the film at the West End Cinema Sunday Night. I had played at Landmark R Street last
week.

Saturday, April 06, 2013

The documentary “Future by Design” (2006), by William
Gazecki, presents the work of architect and inventor Jacque Fresco, who is
viewed as a modern Leonardo Da Vinci.

Most of the film consists of Fresco talking, while
animations of his planned communities, cities and other inventions are
show. There are also many clips from an
August 1974 television review on Larry King Live.

Fresco imagined a utopian world which could function without
money (even the bitcoin). People would still work because of
“need” but would do work that they enjoy.
Materials would become intelligence, and buildings would construct
themselves, not only with robotics but also with “memory materials” which he
explains in molecular terms. The concept
is interesting, but the way he applies it would seem to contradict the notion
of entropy in physics.

Much of his work was done around a planned community in
Venus, FL, where people in individual homes could not see other homes through
the vegetation.

Fresco believes that most people’s value systems develop to
support established power structures, which are often religious. He believes only primitive civilizations have
war, crime, and want. There is a
question of how develop his communities (some underwater!) without considering
individual people and how they relate to the whole. He doesn’t mention climate change
specifically.

The official site (from Open Edge) is here. The film played in many smaller festivals.

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